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Nevada DREAMers Rally Outside of Romney’s Campaign Headquarters

by Maria Ponce on 02/03/2012 at 11:55am

As part of our special primary and caucus election coverage, Voz y Voto 2012, I’m now in Las Vegas with my colleague, Maribel Hastings, reporting on where the GOP presidential hopefuls stand on immigration.

Another group that has been actively following the GOP candidates and demanding clear answers from them — particularly from Mitt Romney on wether or not he supports DREAMers — are DREAM Act activists from around the country.

Yesterday, days before the GOP caucus election here in Nevada, we ran into some of the same persistent DREAMers from Florida’s direct action, outside of Romney’s campaign headquarters in Las Vegas.

The DREAMers, along with Nevada DREAMer, Astrid Silva, attempted to hand deliver a letter to Mitt Romney or his staff asking the Governor to support their dreams. But instead, they were surprised to find that the doors to his campaign office were locked and no one was in sight from his staff to hear their request.

However, the DREAMers did get to talk to a couple of his campaign volunteers who were returning from their lunch break and found themselves locked out of the campaign offices with the DREAMers. They were forced to listen to the DREAMers’ request.

Watch here:

To recap, last week in Florida, DREAMers Cesar Vargas, Erika Andiola and Felipe Matos attempted to talk to Romney and ask him why he doesn’t support the DREAM Act. (In case you missed it, check out some of the footage here). Some time earlier in New York, another DREAMer, Lucy, made her way into a Romney event and asked him, point blank: “Are you going to support the DREAM Act.”

“I already said, across the country, I would veto the Dream Act” the GOP frontrunner answered.

Romney has called the DREAM Act a “handout” and has promised to veto the bill should it come up during a Romney presidency. Only recently did he say that he would support gutting the DREAM Act by allowing a path towards citizenship for DREAMers who are willing to serve in the military — a job that not even most AMERICAN citizens willingly enlist for.

In fact, not only did DREAMers attempt to get clear answers from Mitt Romney, but they also tried to get an answer from Florida’s Senator, Marco Rubio, who doesn’t support the DREAM Act as it stands now. We were able to get footage of the brave DREAMers interrupting Marco Rubio’s speech.

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